Smiles & Divinity

Second Place (tie), adults' essays

Camille Moser |

12/18/2008 - 12/19/08

I guess I celebrate the holidays because my mom did, and she celebrated because she was a Christian.

I celebrate because I am fascinated with the celebration itself. I celebrate because we humans have done this very thing every year during this time of year for thousands of years. That's pretty compelling.

But still, I'm not a Christian. I haven't labeled myself a Christian for more than 15 years. I move toward Buddhism these days. I am merely leftovers from a Methodist Christian home of the '70s. Do I really have the right to hold a winter celebration?

I feel the need to validate my celebration. But it's no matter if I do or don't, for this stormy holiday comes like a train every year with or without rhyme, reason, or logic. I can only imagine a bitter and lonely time for myself if I didn't at least try to celebrate. So, guilt in hand, I go forth. I celebrate. I can't help it.

A look into the vast paradox within my brain reveals me asking myself, "Where is the Divinity in my holiday?" Midst the candlelight and Christmas music I figure there ought to be something soulful going on in my head.

I search my thoughts and this mental video of how Christmas has changed for me starts playing. The river of mental pictures stops here in New Mexico, where my family celebrates solstice, Christmas, and everything in between. It's a confusing affair.

I'm positive that I always knew there was something magic about Christmas; something ineffable and secret. There was something there that made my gut tingle and my emotions soar.

When I was a kid, mom and I would put on these reel-to-reels full of Christmas music, and I'd instantly be swirling in holy paradise. But I knew Christmas hadn't arrived until I would wake up on Christmas morning and see mom smile. She gave me Christmas in that smile. She kept it on every Christmas, all day, on that day. It made me feel loved completely and gave me a constant connection to her heart.

My mother turned the big holiday wheel every year when she made her white Divinity in the silver pot with the copper bottom that I used last night for spaghetti. She would boil that stuff to an exact temperature, then quickly lay it out in big rubber puffs on waxed paper.

Her overly sweet Divinity was favored by my family during the holidays. When I would peel the nutty, white-sugar clumps off the wax paper and put them away for the family celebration, I knew that the times were upon us.

The memory of my last Christmas with mom just made its way up through the haze. It feels like I almost forgot this. I was in my mid-20s, and she was terminally ill with cancer. After my own bout in the hospital, I went straight to her house on Christmas Eve day. It seemed a miracle to be together in time for Christmas.

That Christmas Eve, I asked her if she would let me watch a video that she had bought for someone else. It was my favorite from childhood. I had watched it many times on Christmas Eves past while she moved in the kitchen, making her Divinity.

Then I asked the cancer patient if she was going to make her Divinity. "Please make it. It makes me happy when you make it," said the selfish daughter.

Mom agreed and did so while I watched the show, like when I was a kid. Nothing might look as pathetic as the scene in her house that night — both of us acting out our parts in our own Christmas play one last time. What a sight we were; one with cancer and dying; the other cut open and healing. There was no tree that year, but it didn't matter. Just she mattered, being my sweet mom for one more Christmas.

For the last 20 years or so I've been trying to carry the torch my mother passed me, the keeping and making of Christmas for my family. I'm the go-to girl, the one who makes it happen now.

It's a shame that I go into a frenzy of insecurity as soon as November starts. I feel inadequate. I worry. Maybe it's the dread of my rip-off celebrations that only mock the authentic ones of my youth, the ones my mother put on. Traditions I've tried to create are only my fantasies. Joy seems to only come from the outside in, because inside my heart, joy is busy holding hands with doom. Side-by-side they run through the season searching for Divinity, her Divinity.

I'm trying to find meaning, some meaning in our celebration. I search for meaning not only in Christmas or winter solstice as we call it now, but meaning in the few relationships I've managed to hang on to — even meaning in the ones that I've managed to let go. The mental calculator pops up in my head as it tallies all the progress I didn't make on every level. But still, there's hope.

"Maybe this will be the year," I think. Maybe this year will be the authentic year; the one my kids remember; the one they miss when I am gone; the one they try to recreate for their kids, only to realize that it's just the same."

A picture of me running to them with the torch comes to mind. I feel sad that I've never made mom's Divinity and guilty that I was the only one in the family who didn't like it. I never ate a piece in my life — I just liked her making it.

Sometimes I wonder if our ancient ancestors also questioned how authentic they felt about their purported reasons for winter celebrations. I imagine their world as I read about what they celebrated and why. Between us all has always been the binding cement of our mortality, the vulnerability of the group.

Our willingness to give it up, not hoard and share freely, has always been a risky business. Our gifts of food, drink, patience, and smiles are the very things we are at risk of losing should the sun not rise tomorrow; should the Sons of God think us selfish or miserly. It occurs to me that I am human too. I'm mortal and vulnerable. I have a right to celebrate by token of my own humanity. In life we celebrate; in death we transform. I think I just validated myself.

You know, maybe all my kids really need to have an authentic celebration is for me to smile. Just smile all day on the most special day of the year, like mom did. It's hard to believe that it could be that easy for my kids. I remember, though, that mom would tell me every year as I peeled those nutty, white clumps off the wax paper, that Divinity was actually very simple to make.